Windows 7 Poised To Take PC Pole Position

After the debacle that was Windows Vista, Microsoft needed a hit, and it got one in the form of Windows 7, which debuted to solid reviews and sales in and out of the enterprise back in the fall of 2009. With Windows XP finally falling to the wayside after ten years and Windows Vista a bad dream many organizations skipped altogether, Windows 7 appears to be poised to take its place as the preeminent PC platform.

According to analyst firm Gartner, Windows 7 will hit that major milestone by the end of 2011. At that time, the platform will be running on 42% of all business and consumer PCs worldwide, making it the leading desktop and laptop operating system for the first time.

Greatly contributing to the explosion of Windows 7 PCs is an escalation in information technology spending and the follow through by enterprises with planned Windows 7 deployments. Late last year, Gartner predicted IT spending globally would rise by 3.1% to $2.5 trillion in 2011 from $2.4 trillion in 2010.

"Steady improvements in IT budgets in 2010 and 2011 are helping to accelerate the deployment of Windows 7 in enterprise markets in the U.S. and Asia/Pacific, where Windows 7 migrations started in large volume from 4Q10," said Gartner research director Annette Jump. "Many enterprises have been planning their deployment of Windows 7 for the last 12 to 18 months, and are now moving rapidly to Windows 7."

The researcher estimates 94% of all new computers shipped this year will run on Windows 7. That's 635 million Windows 7 PCs in 2011 alone.

Gartner cautions that Windows 7 may be the last Microsoft operating system deployed to all employees through large-scale, corporate-wide migrations, however. Instead, you'll find many organizations using alternative client architectures and delivery methods, including for Windows, as they increasingly turn to virtualization and Cloud Computing over the next few years.

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Windows XP Finally Falls Below 50% Market Share

It was going to happen and some point.

Net Applications now lists Windows XP with a market share of 49.84 percent, down from 51.13 percent in June.

Windows XP was launched almost 10 years ago, on August 24, 2001 and is still the world's most popular operating system. Windows Vista failed to become a replacement for XP, but Windows 7 is apparently eating away share from XP at an accelerating pace. However, Windows 7 cannot collect all those users that XP and Windows Vista are losing every month: XP and Vista lost a combined 1.57 points of OS market share in July, while Windows 7 gained just 0.74 points and now stands at 27.87 percent. Windows overall dropped to from 88.29 percent to 87.66 percent market share, while Mac OS X climbed from 5.37 percent to 5.59 percent and iOS is now estimated to hold 2.98 percent.

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Microsoft and Suse Renew $100 Million Linux License

Microsoft makes Windows, a closed source platform. Suse builds open source Linux distros aimed at enterprise users. On the surface, these two would appear the unlikely couple, but the two companies just renewed a pact dating back to 2006 that has Microsoft purchasing and reselling Suse licenses. As part of the four-year contract extension, Microsoft has agreed to invest $100 million in new Suse Linux Enterprise certificates for Microsoft enterprise customers receiving Linux support from Suse.

"Our collaboration with Suse not only helps customers to achieve success today, but also seeks to provide them with a solid foundation for tomorrow," said Sandy Gupta, general manager of the Open Solutions Group at Microsoft. "Through our continued engagement on the technical side, an outstanding support offering from Suse and our ability to provide mutual IP assurance, we feel confident that we will be able to deliver core value to those running mixed-source IT environments well into the future — and into the cloud.”

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Get 400 MS Points Free with Games for Windows Purchase

Microsoft is shelling out MS Points for those who purchase a Games for Windows title from Xbox.com this week.

To celebrate the (sad) merging of Games for Windows Marketplace and Xbox.com, Microsoft is giving away 1,000,000 free Microsoft Points starting July 25 and ending August 1. The only requirement is to make a Games for Windows online purchase between those dates. Consumers will then receive an email code for 400 Microsoft Points.

"Games for Windows Marketplace is open to millions of Xbox LIVE gamers around the world," Microsoft states. "Log in with your Xbox LIVE account and enjoy a single unified identity across Xbox LIVE and Games for Windows — LIVE. It’s the same gamertag, friends list, achievements and gamerscore on both platforms. Games for Windows Marketplace delivers great games at great prices and gives you access to Games for Windows – LIVE, a free online gaming service that lets you connect and play with your friends and millions of Xbox LIVE members!"

Microsoft moved the Games for Windows Marketplace over to Xbox.com back on July 11. "All of the same content from GamesForWindows.com will be available on Xbox.com so members of communities across Xbox 360 and Games for Windows can purchase and get details on their favorite games, all in one place," explained a spokesperson. "All account information will remain the same and community members can still take advantage of their Xbox Live profile in their Windows games and stay connected to friends who are playing on the PC."

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Firefox at 64-bit: Do You Care?

Mozilla has begun collecting feedback on what appears to be a more serious approach to move Firefox for Windows from 32 to 64 bit. 

Taking the step from 32-bit to 64-bit has been much more difficult than many had anticipated and has been in the workings for close to a decade - compare that to the relatively quick transition from 16-bit to 32-bit in the mid 1990s. Of course, there are hurdles that need to be overcome and the benefits of a 64-bit app are only now becoming much more mainstream with more vendors now motivated to think about a transition.

Mozilla's product manager, Asa Dotzler, just posted a somewhat careful question to the Firefox community and asked users what they would expect from a 64-bit version. The question by itself may be confusing as the perception of a technology may not be aligned with its potential. However, Dotzler's post indicates that very little research has been done on Mozilla's side to figure out what the opportunities of a 64-bit Firefox really are as he tells his blog readers that "any help is appreciated."

Of course, Mozilla has done some research and was out quite early with a 64-bit version of Firefox. Firefox 3.1 was the first 64-bit version of Firefox and was released in fall of 2008. "Released" is an overstatement as Windows Firefox 64-bit builds have never made it past the developer channel and are even today only offered via a nightly build download (now in version 8.0). Last week, Mozilla announced much more serious test builds of Windows 64-bit builds as it installed Windows 2008 servers "that can generate the 64-bit version of Mozilla Firefox."

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Windows 8 Will Play Very Nicely With Windows 7

Over 400 Million Windows 7 Licenses Sold!

Kicking off Microsoft's annual Worldwide Partner Conference, CEO Steve Ballmer today thanked partners for helping make Windows 7 the fastest-selling operating system in history, now with more than 400 million Windows 7 licenses sold in less than two years.

Echoing that point, Tami Reller, corporate vice president and chief financial officer of Windows and Windows Live, emphasized that Windows 7 is the path to Windows 8. Noting that there are still more than 200 million PCs running Windows XP, which was launched in 2001, Reller told partners they have a real opportunity to deliver more value to customers in the short term and "set them up for the future."

In providing an overview of the road ahead with Windows, Reller told partners that despite the record growth and success of Windows 7, there is tremendous Windows 7 deployment opportunity now and well into the future. "We see a future with a heterogeneous enterprise environment of Windows 8 devices and apps alongside Windows 7 PCs and apps," she said.

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5 reasons to embrace Microsoft Office 365 (or at least some of it)

Last week, I offered you 5 reasons why you should avoid Office 365 -- the new cloud service from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT). This week, I want to offer the flipside of the coin. Let's see the glass half-full in The Long View...

Office 365 is a replacement for (and superset of) Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), its previous cloud collaboration offering. The two key components of BPOS are cloud-hosted versions of Exchange Server 2007 and Sharepoint Server 2007.

Office 365 updates the software to the latest versions, and adds additional functionality. Much of my criticism last week was aimed at how the new functionality presents itself. However, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the parts of Office 365 that are inherited from BPOS have some killer advantages over the competition.

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